WHILST pre-season tours may be old-hat for some of Argyle's senior professionals, it is a whole new experience for first year professionals Shane White and Damien McCrory and second year apprentice, Ben Gerring.

Despite the relative novelty of thier first tour, the trio know that this season will be an important one in their overall development as footballers.

Damien McCrory did no harm to his reputation last night as he came off the bench to bag Argyle's equaliser in the 1-1 draw against Furth.

He said: "I was pleased when I came on and very pleased to get the equaliser

"It was a run down the right wing, David McNamee got on the end of the ball and got a low driven cross and I was lucky enough to tap it in so I was really pleased."

Despite his young age, Limerick born McCrory has had international experience with the Republic of Ireland under-18 and has further aspirations for this season.

He said: "I was away with the under 18's in Germany and we played them twice in two friendlies and I started them both, so hopefully I'll be in the under 19's squad for this season.

"I want to make my debut this season. To come on off the bench, make a few appearances and, if I train hard, it should all go well."

Fellow apprentice Shane White also played yesterday, partnering Matt Doumbe in central defence for the full 90 minutes.

Shane said: "I was very pleased with my overall performance. There are still bits of my game I could improve on but I think I did okay."

White was awarded the Young Player of the Year award, having captained the Argyle Youth cup side to a very respectable quarter final last season and believes it was the team spirit that got them so far.

He said: "We had a good team really with a good bunch of lads who got on well and just took it onto the pitch.

"We unfortunately got beaten by Manchester City in the quarter finals."

Like Damien, White knows exactly what he wants from this season.

"I just want try to and break into the first team as quickly as possible, and just take it from there." He said.

Meanwhile, 6'5" centre back Ben Gerring had not scheduled to come on the tour until last week.

"I was shocked to say the least," said Gerring of this inclusion in the travelling party.

"With the amount of centre halves they had, I didn't think they would take any from the youth team

"But I think it was a day before [the squad left for Austria] I was called into the gaffer's office and I was over the moon to find out."

Despite impressing in Argyle 1-1 with Weston-super-Mare last week, Gerring did not feature against Furth having picked up an injury in training.

The first couple of days were brilliant nice getting involved with the lads but then obviously got stopped a bit with the injury

He said: "I took a knock on the knee in a training game at Harpers Park, landed awkwardly and took it into the Austria trip, and it has got worse ever since.

"It got to the stage on Monday where we just had to knock it on the head. So now it's just about recovering - 7-10 days and hopefully I'll see a bit more of pre-season."

Chris Parsons